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Need help when use isa-to-usb card in IBM 5160!

I

ineverland

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 28, 2011
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57
I bought a ch375 based 8bit isa to usb card,the card has a bios rom,the readme.txt come with the card said you can boot from usb stick instead of noisy hard ,but when i plug the card in my 5160 and power on,POST memory check will stop upto 096KB(5160 actually has 256KB memory),then boot to hard disk,if I remove hard disk it boot to BASIC,I dont know how to make use of this card now.I read Dca2 has this card too in (http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcf...-an-8-bit-ISA-Bus-it-is-possible!!!/page5).So I writ this post ask for help.Does anyone know how to resolve this problem?TKS!
 
this is some pictures I captured.
 

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Why POST memory check can't finish?Does the isa card make something wrong?
The card PCB shows a line isa_rom@0803,you can see in picture,what does it mean?
 
I unplug BASIC ROM(u19) too, still no use.
When i plug the card in the slot near 8088cpu,memory check can finish,but still no use.
there is no card bios output to screen,so i guess bios in the card did not been called by systen bios.
 

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Does anything different happen if it's in slot 8 (closest to the CPU)?
 
pearce_jj said:
Does anything different happen if it's in slot 8 (closest to the CPU)?
Click to expand...
If it's in slot 8,POST memory check ok,all 256KB memory can be recognized,system boot as the card is not plugged.Nothing special printed on screen.
 
Actually I remove all other cards except CGA to find out if it conflicts with isa-to-usb card.
Now I want to know what is in the bios rom,is the bios went wrong?Does Anyone know how to test if there is something wrong with the card?
can debug.exe read something from the card' bios rom or io port ?
 
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Try pulling the chip closest to the ROM and trying the card again with just the .sys driver.
 
Looking at the post #37 from Dca2, His card doesn't have the "Boot Rom" ? installed, try disabling it / pulling it and use the dos driver which hopefully you have, Maybe the Boot Rom requires a 286 or better.
 
If the BIOS from the card is paged in, you can read its contents with debug.exe. My way of finding stuff in the UMB area is to use hiram.exe (http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/hiram.zip - there are other programs that examine UMB but I've found this one to be the most reliable)

Try this: unplug everything except the video card, boot, use hiram.exe and note down what it reports; plug the USB card, boot, use hiram.exe again and see what it reports; compare the two and note if it sees any extra ROM in the UMB. If you have the size and address of the ROM you can then read it with debug.exe.
 
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Malc said:
Looking at the post #37 from Dca2, His card doesn't have the "Boot Rom" ? installed, try disabling it / pulling it and use the dos driver which hopefully you have, Maybe the Boot Rom requires a 286 or better.
Click to expand...
Maybe you are right,if boot rom can't be used in XT,then my hope of boot from usb stick
was broken.Now my XT is a closed system because I can't copy anything to it.The XT can only read 5.25 floppy which my modern pc can't access,that is my real problem.If I can boot from usb disk then everything is ok,now i can not even copy a .sys driver to XT hard disk.
 
jh1523 said:
If the BIOS from the card is paged in, you can read its contents with debug.exe. My way of finding stuff in the UMB area is to use hiram.exe (http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/hiram.zip - there are other programs that examine UMB but I've found this one to be the most reliable)

Try this: unplug everything except the video card, boot, use hiram.exe and note down what it reports; plug the USB card, boot, use hiram.exe again and see what it reports; compare the two and note if it sees any extra ROM in the UMB. If you have the size and address of the ROM you can then read it with debug.exe.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I just found I dont have a debug.exe in XT's hard drive.I think the boot rom may be mapped to system memory ,as isa_rom@0803 printed on PCB.
 
Are you able to pull the contents off of the USB ROM? I've got one of those ISA cards too, but don't have the ROM to test with. I've got an EPROM Burner/Reader as well so I can make a copy.
 
ineverland said:
Maybe you are right,if boot rom can't be used in XT,then my hope of boot from usb stick
was broken.Now my XT is a closed system because I can't copy anything to it.The XT can only read 5.25 floppy which my modern pc can't access,that is my real problem.If I can boot from usb disk then everything is ok,now i can not even copy a .sys driver to XT hard disk.
Click to expand...

What version of dos is your XT running ?, I suspect the dos driver file has a minimum version requirement it will work with, does it say anything in the instructions about the version of dos it requires, It's possible to hook up a 3.5" floppy drive to the XT's floppy controller and use that in 720k mode, As long as you have a spare 3.5" floppy drive and the right cables and the right version of dos.
 
new_castle_j said:
Are you able to pull the contents off of the USB ROM? I've got one of those ISA cards too, but don't have the ROM to test with. I've got an EPROM Burner/Reader as well so I can make a copy.
Click to expand...

ok,I will upload the onboard rom image tomorrow.
 
It might be worth dropping the option rom chip into a NIC and seeing what happens.
 
Malc said:
What version of dos is your XT running ?, I suspect the dos driver file has a minimum version requirement it will work with, does it say anything in the instructions about the version of dos it requires, It's possible to hook up a 3.5" floppy drive to the XT's floppy controller and use that in 720k mode, As long as you have a spare 3.5" floppy drive and the right cables and the right version of dos.
Click to expand...

It runs dos 2.1, and dos driver can run on 8088 as Dca2 said in another thread.
I do have a 3.5" floppy drive,but the cables are different,I don't know what kind of cable can do that,Do you have a picture?Many thanks!
 
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